Election Countdown: Expert Analysis on Pivotal 2024 Races
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Back, as I said in our previous hour, we're doing a special crossover show for the next two hours with Sam Stone and Chuck Warren of Breaking Battlegrounds. And we'll say more about that a little bit later. Gentlemen, take it away.

Well, we want to jump right into it because one of our guests is on a very tight timeline. We are covering all the various swing states. We have folks coming in who can speak to each of those directly, but we've also got a couple of national folks. One of those is Chris Saliza, political analyst with two decades of experience at major outlets like CNN and The Washington Post. He now runs So What, a newsletter that he dives deep into the why behind major political events to help us understand what's coming next. Chris, thank you so much for joining us.

Hey, y'all, I'm sorry I have such a short period of time. It's busy this time of year. I get it, and we appreciate your time. Yes, indeed. So with our brief time here, what are the three things you think our listeners should be looking out for Tuesday night when polls close?

Sure. I'll give you a trite answer, but I actually mean it. Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. And I'm not just doing that because I can't think of three things. No, look, I just think when it comes down to it, like, yes, there are seven swing states. Obviously, Arizona is one of them.

I think it could wind up being that the election gets decided there. To me, whoever wins Pennsylvania is going to have a huge leg up. Harris needs it a little bit more than Trump does. But it just seems to me that if you told me I can –

If you said, Chris, I'll tell you who won one swing state. Tell me which one is it going to be. And then you have to tell me who won. I say I want to know Pennsylvania because I think whoever wins Pennsylvania probably winds up winning the presidency. So let me ask you this quick question. If Kamala Harris had picked Governor Shapiro, would we be having a discussion about Pennsylvania?

Okay, so two things. One, I was beating the drum saying, don't overthink this, Kamala Harris. Pick the person who might be able to help you in the state. You have to win, right? It seems simple to me. I don't think VPs make a huge amount of difference. To answer your question, yes, I think we would have still been talking about Pennsylvania. But I do think she would be in a marginally better position because even if Josh Shapiro moves a point,

Well, that's one point in a race that's going to be really close to me. The tip won't get a lot of attention at the start, but man, it feels to me like it's faded. I would have picked someone just purely raw politics strategically that maybe they help me in the state I need the most. I will tell you, if Harris loses and she loses Pennsylvania, there's going to be a lot of second guessing of that VP pick. When's the last time a presidential ticket picked a vice president purely for the state?

You know, it probably it was probably for the region in truth. And it was probably when JFK picked LBJ in 1960, because there was a lot of skepticism about JFK as a Catholic and LBJ was able to sort of soothe worries. This was when the South was very democratic, soothe worries that it would work. You know, look, I mean.

George W. Bush didn't pick Dick Cheney because he was worried about winning Wisconsin, right? I think that maybe Bill Clinton thought putting Al Gore on the ticket might back then, right, 1992, make Tennessee potentially competitive. But in general, I think the assumption is, okay, well, if he's not going to win the state – and I don't think Josh Shapiro – like I said, Josh Shapiro's not going to guarantee a win for Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania –

I'm saying if we expect this race to be really close, tens of thousands of votes, not hundreds of thousands of votes in terms of the margin, why not pick a popular Democratic governor in the state you need more than any other? That's all. I think that makes total sense. What else should folks be looking for early on election night to get an indication? Sure.

I'll give you – let me give you two. So North Carolina and Georgia both count votes really fast. If they split, which means Harris wins one of North Carolina and Georgia –

That's tremendously good for her. I guarantee she's going to win, but good, especially if she wins Pennsylvania. So those two are going to move. They count votes fast. So watch those. If Trump wins both of them, he's in really good shape. If Harris wins one, maybe we're talking about either a Trump presidency or we're talking about a week until we know because of Arizona and Nevada, and it's probably going to be close. The other thing I'll say is watch –

the gender gap. To me, if you want to oversimplify it, if Donald Trump is men more than come by more than Kamala Harris wins women, Donald Trump will probably win the election. If Kamala Harris wins women by more than Donald Trump wins men, Kamala Harris will probably win the election. I'm oversimplifying, but only slightly. Chris, you have only about, I think, 30 seconds left here. But real quick, is New Hampshire actually in play? Because that kind of came up today. Right.

Yeah, I don't think so. I would put New Hampshire, Virginia, Minnesota, New Mexico, Texas. I think all of those are probably going to be six or under point victories. I just don't – I can see the candidate getting – I can see Donald Trump getting 46 or 47 percent in New Hampshire. I can't see him getting –

Same thing goes for Kamala Harris in Texas. I still think – I know this is boring, but I still think the seven swing states are the seven swing states. I do not think we're going to get a dark horse coming out of nowhere. I know Trump was in New Mexico. I don't see that. And I know we talked about it in Hampshire. I don't see that. So –

Count me as skeptical. I think the seven that I'm sticking with the seven that we've had. Fantastic. And last word here, Chris, what how do people follow you on election night to stay up? Oh, thank you. That's so nice. So just type in Substack and my name, Chris, C-I-L-L-I-C-C-A.

It'll come up, or you can follow me on YouTube. Same thing, YouTube and Crystalism. We are almost to 50,000 YouTube subscribers. So it's all free. All my content, YouTube and SubSec, all free through the election. So I always say, it's worth exactly how much you pay for it.

All right. All right. Hey, thank you. Thank you. Sorry for my short window. No worries. Thank you. Thank you. I love the energy. Someone like, well, all your guests, you know, you can tell people who kind of love what they do. You can just hear it in their voices and they just live for moments like this. And it's wonderful. I was thinking of some of the people growing up.

And it's a whole new crowd now. You saw these old volcanoes like Hal Bruno on election night and stuff for CBS and the networks. But this new crop, they just have a ton of energy. Let me do something real quick housekeeping-wise as we steer the audience into this crossover hour and next. Chuck, my audience knows Sam very well from the Thursday shows. He's a regular.

And the audience here knows you from Saturday mornings. But for those from this show that don't know you, say a little bit about yourself, a little autobiography. Feel free to introduce yourself to our audience. Well, I'm a resident of Arizona, live in North Phoenix. I am partners in a company called Identity Digital, which we own the domains .info, .org, .vote, things of that nature. Sam and I work a lot together on political consulting. We're a major political voter contact firm. I have four kids.

and um sam and i've just been having a good time radio last two years so we appreciate you having sam on every week and appreciate you having me on today we're just hacks who like to yap is what this comes down to well you guys have been doing a tremendous job and i hear about your saturday show all the time and it's not just local it's uh in several different markets now which shows how good it is and the growth of it so it's great to be able to do this with you and it's

It's great that I was telling – I think it will be great. What I was telling the audience earlier is I tend to focus mostly on national political – this time you have a national political presidential race and some Arizona. But you guys are covering races all across the country and we'll be doing that over the next couple of hours.

I think one of the things that makes us work well together, both in business but also on the radio, is that we come at this from fairly different perspectives within the Republican Party. Yes. And we understand that we still need each other, right? This is something I think our party has struggled with in the last few years. It's like Chuck would describe himself as a proud neocon. I would describe myself more as a populist, kind of an oddball libertarian populist. But –

There's room for all of this under the Republican tent. And just getting back to the interview real quick, we had to jump up with the interview with Chris Silliza. He ended up with a time constraint. But he's fantastic. And I really appreciate these ex-CNN people who all of a sudden –

It's so on freedom. Their freedom. Yeah. Think about how. Yeah. How how liberated they are now that they're not at CNN. It says something about CNN. It says something about the Faustian bargain you have to make to be on. Cuomo is fascinating. You got Chris Cuomo. Got.

Chris Silliza. Piers Morgan. People forget. I know he still drives people mad on certain issues, but he's far more moderate than he ever was when he was at CNN. Look at Mark Halperin from ABC. Mark Halperin. Absolutely. And he's really been fascinating. Huge. Yeah. All of them have become far more interesting, quite frankly, post-network television. Yeah.

I think that says something important about network television, unfortunately. Well, yeah, it's an indictment on CNN. And, you know, it's interesting. I was, Sam, I think it was last week you and I were talking with someone I seem to have this vague recollection of about...

Regarding Fox News, and we were saying if you go to their day part, it's not that opinionated. In fact, they have more liberals on their day part than CNN does conservative throughout the course of 24 hours. They're pretty much straight news during the day. Until 7 p.m. pretty much, and then they're editorial, but they say they're editorial. It's kind of like I think we were saying the Wall Street Journal, the paper itself, the news section itself is pretty straight. It's just news. Pretty much straight down the middle with a liberal tinge. Yeah.

Look, but J schools in this country today, you cannot have a newsroom that doesn't have a liberal tinge. Unfortunately, we're going to talk more about that a little bit later. But first, we've got some great guests you've lined up for. So fasten your seatbelts, folks. Sam Stone, Chuck Warren and I will be right back.

Welcome back to the Seth Leibson show special Halloween pre-election edition, doing a crossover with breaking battleground, Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. Take it away, gentlemen. Well, our next guest up, we're focusing here on Arizona. We've got Constantine Carrard. He is the founder and president of grassroots partners. One of Arizona's leading campaign consulting and public affairs firm. I think he, I think he's run a majority of the Arizona Senate and house actually, which is awfully darn impressive. Uh,

Welcome to the program. Good to be on, gents. Thanks for having me, buddy. So tell us what you think we should be looking for on election night for the House and the state Senate in Arizona. Man, I mean, there's probably six or seven swing districts that everybody agrees are going to be close, and so everybody's going to put their

put their eyeballs on those returns and see how the initial vote breaks. I think like in the last couple of cycles, if you see a Republican who's ahead at eight o'clock, that's usually a very good sign because election night tends to get better for Republicans the longer it goes. And what happens in the days after usually kind of skews a bit Republican. Republicans have done a really good job on turnout this time compared to the last couple of cycles. And so there's a number of of

where you still see Democrats with an advantage in terms of the percentage of Democrats who have turned out relative to the percentage of Republicans. But because the districts are pretty Republican, there's still a Republican advantage in terms of the total number of ballots. And so the question is, are those Republicans voting Republican or are they doing what they've done some the last couple of cycles and peeling off and supporting Democrats? One of the things we're seeing, CQ, is that a –

This election in Arizona, some of the other states that are doing a lot of early ballots, we're seeing a lot more low propensity voters, voters who haven't voted before, one of four voters. We're seeing that here. Do do we have any indication? Are they filling out their whole ballot or are they stopping after the top couple of lines? We don't get to know. But in terms of like the ground game. Yeah. Yeah.

But in terms of like the ground game, what you're hearing, are we mobilizing these voters at the lower levels also? I think that's the goal. There's an aggressive kind of golden ticket campaign where you're putting flyers on doors to lower propensity Republicans saying, here's the slate, fill out the whole slate. And you can, you know, it's everything done like water districts and some of these races. So if you're a voter, you may lean into that because that's really helpful. You're like, well, I didn't know who to vote for all these races. And here's a here's a handy guide. So we're

Republicans are making an effort with the lower-propensity voters to get them to fill out the whole ballot. And again, it's a few percent. It's 3 percent more, 4 percent more turnout. But again, that's thousands of votes. And in some of these races where they're decided by hundreds of votes, that's a really big deal. How would you compare the ground games on both sides overall now between 2020, 2016, and this cycle? Yeah.

I'm going to give, I mean, I still think the Democrats to their credit are doing a good job on the ground. Um, ground games are expensive and the Democrats have this endless amount of money. Uh, and you know, I've got voters, I've got candidates who are saying, Hey, I was out knocking and I ran into a team that's out knocking for my opponents. You know, and one of them was from Massachusetts and one of them was from New Jersey. They're putting them on airplanes or getting them hotel rooms and they're flying them into Arizona to do turnout. So the Democrat ground game is always going to be pretty impressive in that regard. Um,

But the Republican effort now definitely is an improvement over 2020. It was pretty good in 2016. 2020, 2022, again, we had the problem because there

There was a real lack of confidence in the mail-in process. And so where Republicans historically had dominated early voting, we just completely pulled back. And so you could knock on a door and that voter wasn't going to turn out anyway. So you've had Trump, you've had Kerry Lake, you've had the state party. We've made legislative fixes to the process. Everybody's basically saying, get early, get early, you know, vote early, vote early, too big to rig, make it so big they can't. All that kind of stuff. That messaging is paying off.

Hey, Constantine, good to talk to you again, my friend. What's your sense of how well the Democratic Party strategy has been using the abortion issue and Prop 139 for the rest of the Democratic Party races? My sense is the election outside of 139 would look roughly the same, which is to say it hasn't worked for them as much as they thought. But I wonder what your sense of it is.

Well, I don't know how many Democrats are listening to your show, but if they were... About 25%, we think, is the answer. About 25%. I would say keep doing whatever... Yeah, I want to tell them, keep doing whatever you're doing, and then for the rest of your audience, I don't think it's working as well as they would want it to. It is, you know, it's...

The only thing, you know, we've got a number of candidates running in legislative districts and continue to get hit on abortion and guns, gun control, every time for gun safety, that kind of stuff. And I just I don't have a sense that if you're an undecided voter two weeks out, you're an abortion voter or a gun control voter. If you're an abortion voter, a gun control voter, you know who your party is. You know, your nominee is, you know, your candidates are. You probably already voted. So I assume that some of that is just there.

They're kind of leaning into what they're most comfortable talking about. They also don't have a lot of other issues where they have a natural advantage. A Democrat saying I'll be tougher on the border than the Republican doesn't make any sense. You know, I'll be better for the economy than the Republican doesn't make any sense. So they can't really campaign on the issues that that Republicans can right now. They're left with these issues. And I I just I don't have to be to be all in on those those two issues. I don't know. I don't think it makes a lot of sense.

What issue what seats in the House and the Senate do you think are pickup opportunities for Republicans? Obviously, Republicans have to hold the Senate seat in District two. That is that one's critical. And can they pick up in four or nine? Again, four for the Arcadia area, Scottsdale, it's it's on taper. Twenty two thousand more Republicans than Democrats shouldn't even be shouldn't be an issue.

But historically, they keep electing Democrats. So that one will be critical. District 9, which is out in the Mesa area, Scalaberry against Birch. Again, I think a lot of folks are sleeping on District 9, unfortunately, because I think it's gettable for Republicans. They just need to be more ambitious. They're working hard over there. There's a slight Republican advantage on ballots. So the Senate comes down to 249, and that's pretty much it. I think 17, Vince Leach, should be okay down south. The House...

Republicans could pick up a seat in two, although I think that's probably the toughest one of the ones I'm thinking of. They could pick up a seat in four. You have Pamela Carter and Matt Grist both running good races for the Republicans there. Wilmoth and Bradshaw up in two. That's a tough race because the Democrats have been very well-funded, and they're doing sort of a strong single-shot thing. District 13, a good chance for Republicans where Wenninger and Willoughby are running there, and I think

We've got a very good chance of picking up a House seat. Republicans should pick up the House seat in District 16. Chris Lopez running a good race against Keith Seaman down there. Can we hold on in 23? That's a that's a southern Arizona district. It's a very Democrat district. Republicans kind of snuck up on him, got a seat last time. So now it's all guns blazing for for Michelle Pena down there.

You know, can she hold on? Republicans are turning out actually better than Democrats down there. But Democrats still do have an edge on the ballot. So it's there's about a half dozen races where, you know, you could see Republicans increase to maybe a 1713 Senate, potentially be 33, 34 in the House or in a bad year. You know, you're potentially looking whatever, you know, 15, 15, 30, 30.

Do you think we're running out of time here? We got about a minute left. How do people follow you on election night, Constantine? Will you be tweeting results or what would you recommend people follow? I will seek see Carrard on Twitter and they can't spell Carrard, but usually to get as far as about CQU, you know, I pop up. There's not a lot of competition at that level. So CQ and Leipson can't have radio shows anymore. So quickly, do you think we do you think Republicans keep the state Senate? Do they keep the statehouse?

I think at this point in time, though, they're likely to keep them and increase their majorities in at least the state house, possibly the state senate. CQ, thank you for everything you're doing for our state and our community. Thanks for being with us this afternoon. We'll talk to you soon. You bet, man. Take care.

Welcome back to the Seth Leibson Show, a special edition of the Seth Leibson Show. We're doing it with Sam Stone and Chuck Warren, who you usually hear on Saturday mornings at 9 with their show, Breaking Battlegrounds. But we're doing it as a special pre-election show, and it's a delight to have them with us. And I just want to put in – I criticize David Dahl a lot on air. Do you now? Yeah, I want to put in a compliment to you that you have been playing Halloween music and you have not. Some have not.

And you will not. And I didn't even have to ask you. This is how well you know me. You have not done the one song everyone is doing unto death, which is Boris Pickett Johnson. So thank you for being more creative than anyone else. We're not doing that. And I haven't even had to ask you, which is wonderful.

Gents, do you want to talk about some of the propositions that are on the ballot? Yeah, we've got more guests. For those who are staying tuned, we've got Henry Olson coming up talking about the national politics, Donald Bryson in North Carolina, Charles McElwee in Pennsylvania, Ben Yount in Wisconsin. They're all coming up in the next hour here. So we're going to go into each of the states, but we want to obviously tuck into some of these ballot measures that are on the ballot here in Arizona. I think probably starting with Prop 139. Okay.

Which, quite frankly, I think we were just talking about this a little bit with Constantine Carrard on the program. Democrats were putting a lot of hopes on 139 to carry forward a lot of water for them.

And I don't think it is particularly at all. I don't think it's playing much of an impact on any of the races. Well, even though my sense is it will probably pass. It will pass, but it's not going to get in the 60s. No, and it's not going to bring along a lot of Democrats. And I think we would all agree if it only gets the mid 50s, that's a very good night for Republicans. That means it did not carry anybody over the line. Yeah. It makes me wonder a little bit, you know, the past...

Three or four times Kamala Harris came to town before the last two times as the nominee for president. She was here speaking about the abortion issue. That was kind of her thing. That's what they put. It's her only thing. That's right. That's kind of all they had.

And it seems between race and abortion falling on flatter and flatter ears, I just wonder if maybe we're kind of done with this now. Maybe this will be the last election these things seem to be much easier. I think some Republicans here who have taken some heat, quite frankly, deserve a great deal of credit for having worked to get the 15-week law that was originally passed under Doug Ducey back on the ballot because –

And we worked on helping make that happen. Both Chuck and I did just being up front. The reason is very simple. We're both pro-life. But that was going to be the dividing issue. If we still had the territorial ban in place, that was going to be the issue in this election. And I think the strategy of just saying, listen, we we're going to move this off. We're going to say we're going to go back to 15 weeks. Then we can fight this out on the ballot again.

I would tell folks, even if you're pro-abortion, vote no on this measure because the measure being written into the Constitution is a really bad one. And just focus on getting the legislature to modify the law in the way that you want.

Which they would still have the ability to do if this does not pass. If it does, once it's in the Constitution, you're not going to do anything about it. And again, this thing's written in a way that actually is dangerous for women. You do not want your naturopath...

Correct. Prescribing a ninth month abortion. That's we're into really, really weird, strange, dangerous. Yeah, let's be super clear on this. Exactly right, Sam. The proposition known as Proposition 139 is not a moderate proposition. And if you read the entirety of the language, you will see it is not true that it only allows abortion up to a certain point. It allows abortion up to any point under the sluice known as the mental health standard.

for the mother, and it doesn't even require, as Sam was just saying, a physician. It's a very vague and nebulous term of a health care provider. Which actually does have a definition in Arizona, which I included naturopaths for a reason because those are included, but also chiropractors.

licensed massage therapists. I mean, come on. Yes, exactly. Come on. And your dental assistant. And the current law, also to your point, Sam, the current law, if it stays in place, if 139 doesn't pass...

gives abortion for any reason into the second trimester right for any reason people like to say well arizona doesn't protect raping it doesn't have any conditions whatsoever into the second trimester totally legal which is right where the national zeitgeist is on this on this right uh sorry we talked over you a little bit oh no no no you're great about it i mean i agree i just i just don't feel they did what they wanted to do with it long story short they failed all

Want to do a little on 140 when we come back? Absolutely. All right. Thank you. And happy to take your call. 602-508-0960. Delighted to have Sam Stone and Chuck Warren with this crossover version of the Seth Liebson Show today. And we'll be right back.

Yeah, David Dahl, man, coming in with the good Halloween music. I really appreciate it. This is solid. Yeah, it is solid stuff. Chuck Warren and Sam Stone are my guests for this special edition of the Seth Leibson Show this hour and next. We're doing a crossover with their show Breaking Battlegrounds, heard here every Saturday at 9. We were just talking about Prop 139. That's probably the one that will be getting the most attention, but maybe second most and maybe asymptotically close will be 140, Proposition 140. You gents want to talk about that a little bit?

Proposition 140 is a really strange, actually, version of this ranked choice voting system. It's not ranked choice voting entirely. It's...

This is the most bizarre version of this I've seen anywhere. No state has passed anything remotely as complicated at this. The Republican Party obviously has come out against it. The AZ Dem Party came out against it. This thing would completely change our system of elections and most concerningly,

It's when I say it's not straight rank choice voting, straight rank choice voting would move the top two finishers in the rank choice system on. This one doesn't even do that. You can do that. But the secretary of state can simply step in and decide to add more candidates to that field. So like literally the secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, two years from now is running for a different office or running for reelection and

And let's say you have one Democrat and four or five Republicans. He could make sure that all four or five Republicans go on to the general election against him on that side. I mean, literally, it's literally a way to gain the system. Yeah. And contrary to that is Prop 133, which fortunately our legislature are not stupid. And they put Prop 133 at the top of the ballot. Now, that matters because in Arizona, when you have two competing propositions, you're

The one that gets more votes overall wins and supersedes the other one entirely. So vote for 133, which is the first proposition on your ballot. Vote against 140.

And really vote against it if you're Republican, Democrat. Everyone has come out against this thing except George Soros and the people funding it. Well, Sam, explain what Prop 133 is for folks. So Prop 133 actually just codifies our current electoral system. Partisan elections. Partisan elections, which don't get freaked out by the word partisan. That's just what we do now. Right. We.

We have one Republican, one Democrat. If there's a Green Party candidate who gets the signatures, they're on the ballot, the independent, whatever. Everyone has ballot access. Nobody is denied. And everyone understands the system. And if we just get a little bit faster counting them, no one would ever question it again either. It would work. Which we can easily do. Very easily. We can just have the legislature pass a law the way we do election day voting. Chuck, this has been one of your issues talking about this, right? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Let's go ahead and just set a cutoff, a deadline date, a week, 10 days ahead of the election for the last day you can mail your early ballot. Why can't we say your postmark has to be on due the Thursday before the election? Easy enough. I mean, it's ridiculous as we talk to national guests that this election may come down to Arizona and the nation who's already suspicious of elections. Right. Who's already 70 percent of voters have said they're anxious. Right.

Are going to wait 7 to 12 days for Arizona to get their crap together and count this? Because we can't say, be responsible, adult, you've had your ballot for two and a half weeks. If you can't get in before then, I really don't care. So – Go ahead. And you can still go into the polls. And drop it off. Correct. And drop it off. You just can't put it in the mail at that point. So –

The point you were making just a moment ago, Chuck, a couple sentences ago about the suspicion there is about our election processes in Arizona is itself a reason to vote against Proposition 140, which makes the way we would do elections so much more convoluted and complicated. It is, I think, it's...

It's a solution looking for a problem that will create more problems if it passes. Yes. I think this is simply funded by progressive donors who want to make things more difficult here and some consultants who are making money on it. There's no reason for this.

And every argument they make I don't think stands up to scrutiny. I've been listening to the proponents. We all know who the chief proponents are. And every example they give seems to fall apart under serious scrutiny. For example, I heard one of them talking about giving people more choice in – what's the Debbie Lesko District? Eight? Yes, right.

Said, so you know it's always going to be a Republican there. And what we want to do with 140 is give it another shot. It doesn't work that way. If 140 passed, the general election would not be Abe Hamaday against a Democrat. It would be Abe Hamaday or Debbie Lesko perform against another Republican. Take the district elections.

David lives in that. It could be actually, Seth. But here's the really crazy thing about this particular. It's the Fontes angle. It's the Fontes angle. So let's say that I'm Adrian Fontes.

I go and pull whatever Democrat they finish fifth in that pool. I pull them and every and the four Republicans over them. And that's who I send to the general election, because at that point I've got a real good chance to get that Democrat in there. This is gaming the system by people in office at a level we have never seen made possible anywhere in this country before. It's really crazy. Yeah, it is. And I think it ends up giving less choice.

I mean, another example I could do at a more local level, David lives in a district. He's a precinct committee. David Dahl, the producer, lives in a district that it's very hard to elect a Republican at the state legislative level. Very hard. If you had 140, it would be a Democrat against a Democrat.

Right. No Republican. And that, by the way, is equally true for some districts that have it the other way around. 100 percent. 100 percent. Well, I don't think Prop 140 passes. Good. I think it's I think right now we've seen I've seen a couple of polls where it's at 42 percent. It's not going to pass. Good. I was very concerned, but I'm coming around to believe. I think when the Democrat Party came out against it, that totally changed the tide because it's really funny.

On our side, we don't follow the leader like that, but they do. So when they came out, they killed that sucker. Well, that's the other thing about it. We don't have a strong enough party if Prop 140 passed. They do.

I guarantee you that they would still only have one candidate on that ballot for that spot. And we would have two or three. As I've said for many, many years now, I would love, love to spend an election cycle herding sheep instead of cats. But that's not what we get to do on our side of the aisle. Explain that one.

Look, lining up all Republicans to march. No, look, Republicans, I always say are cats, right? Everyone's going their own direction. There's a streak of. They're not just. They're feral cats. They're not even just cats. They're feral cats. They're inveterately independent. They're Savannah feral cats. They're big and fierce.

I mean, look, we just we don't play these games. We believe in kind of a survival of the fittest politics where we're going to fight each other to see who gets that seat or that opportunity. And Democrats, what we've seen, we saw it with Ruben. They don't have primaries. We saw it with Katie Hobbs. Right. We've seen it with every major contested seat. They'll have a competitive primary in a deep blue district.

But they never have competitive primaries in contested seats. Not at all. Not at all. It's sort of like the old Dragnet movie with Tom Hanks. Remember that? With Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks? And they're at that rally, and they're taking cattle prods to people. And Dan Aykroyd goes, you have to appreciate their management skills. So that's the Democrat Party.

Spot on. Have you seen The Verdict yet about your hometown of Boston? I did. You made me watch it. Isn't it good? It's really good. With Paul Newman? Yeah. One of the greatest films ever. You hadn't seen it until a week ago. This is your partner, not mine. Well, he's young. We'll be right back.

Portions of this show brought to you by our friends at Y Refi. Check them out at investyrefie.com. Invest, the letter Y, then refie.com. You've probably seen their ads on Newsmax or Fox News or seen Larry or Dennis or Charlie or me talking about them. Y Refi offers up an investment in a secure and collateralized portfolio where you can earn a fixed rate of return of 10.25%, 10.25%, irrespective of the stock market or the Federal Reserve.

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Where do you want to take us? Do you want to preview what's coming up in the next hour? You want to make some predictions? Let's get to some predictions here in a moment. But first, folks, just stay tuned for this next hour. We've had great guests in the first hour with Chris Eliza and Constantine Carrar, but it gets better from here even. We've got Henry Olson, Donald Bryson in Washington.

Henry Olson doing national, Donald Bryson in North Carolina, Charles McElwee in Pennsylvania, Ben Yont in Wisconsin. So we're trying to get all of those key swing states, people from them on this program to be able to talk specifically about what's coming down the pike in those states. So, Sam, do Republicans win the Senate?

The U.S. Senate. U.S. Senate. Yes. I think 52 to 53 seats. What are the seats we pick up to get 52? We're definitely going to pick up Montana. Yes, for sure. I don't even have a question. And West Virginia. West Virginia. We're going to get both of those. If I had to throw in another one, I think there's a couple that you could get. But I think Eric Hovde looks like he has a pretty good shot. We've got a couple of them, I think, that are right there.

And one of those comes through. I think it's 52, but I think it's Bernie in Ohio. Bernie Moreno, yeah. And I think on our group chat, I've always said I think McCormick in Pennsylvania pulls that off. Wow. That would be huge. To defeat a Casey would be huge. And I think that's 53. That's the one that would surprise me the most. I'll tell you what. That would be nation shaping. The one I would not, two I would not disregard is the Wisconsin race.

And in Michigan. Is that Baldwin, Wisconsin? Yeah, Baldwin. And then Michigan, I would not disregard up there that we pick up that seat. That could be, which would be really interesting. That would be 54-55. Just getting rid of, by the way, Sherrod Brown would be a big deal. Yes. I mean, a big deal. Well, he doesn't fit the state anymore. No, but he's a skillful politician in Washington.

I am more sure that Donald Trump wins, that we win the Senate, and that we lose the House. You think we lose the House? I don't know if we do, but we deserve to to some degree. They've been totally incompetent for two years. Well, then we're looking at 1980 because we didn't have the House in 1980, but we did pick up the Senate. That's a very good point. We knocked out some famous people on the Democratic side in the Senate, and we had ushered in a new kind of –

stronghold for the Republican Party at the executive level for a long time. Well, we're going to have a great show for you the next hour, folks. What did Madison say? We're partly federal, partly national. We're going to cover a lot of national races that have been spoken about that, to my detriment, I have not spent a lot of time on. So thanks for Sam and Chuck for lining it up. Don't go away. A lot of great stuff coming up. We'll be right back.

Four years. That's how long it took Democrats to ruin our economy and plunge our southern border into anarchy. Who helped them hurt us? Ruben Gallego. Washington could have cut taxes for Arizona families, but Ruben blocked the bill. And his fellow Democrats gave a bigger break to the millionaire class in California and New York. They played favorites and cost us billions. And Ruben wasn't done yet.

We'll be right back.

Kerry and the Republicans will secure the border, support our families, and never turn their backs on us. Kerry Lake for Senate. I'm Kerry Lake, candidate for U.S. Senate, and I approve this message. Paid for by Kerry Lake for Senate and the NRSC.

Welcome back as we head into our special crossover radio show today in advance of the election. Crossing over with our friends at Breaking Battlegrounds here every Saturday at 9 a.m. with

With Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. Sam and Chuck, lovely to have you with us and your group of special guests you have for our special pre-election coverage. Take it away, gents. Next up, we have Henry Olson. He's a political analyst, opinion columnist, and host of Beyond the Polls, author of The Working Class Republican. Folks, you can follow him on X at Henry Olson EPPC. Henry is one of the smartest national political pundits I know, and Chuck and I are both huge fans of his work.

and wanted to bring him on for everybody. He's got a good eye on the national race. Yes, he does. So, Henry, let's start off right away with this question. What congressional races should our audience be looking at to determine if Republicans keep control of the House of Representatives?

Yeah, the Republicans have a four-seat edge, and they will gain one seat just because of redistricting changes. So Democrats need five to get a one-seat majority. Democrats hold five seats.

seats that Trump carried in 2020. Look to those. The more Republicans win, the harder it is for Democrats to retake the House. That's Alaska's at-large seat. That's Washington's third district, Ohio's ninth district, Pennsylvania's eighth district, and Maine's second district. The Democrats will try and make it up in the reverse, places where

Republicans hold that Biden won. A couple of those are probably lost, but the ones you want to look at are New York 17 and New York 18 or New York 19. You want to look at California. There's five of them in California, but you really want to look at California.

13, California 22 and California 27. And you want to look at Oregon six. If the Democrats can take five or six of those, they look good and they can offset whatever gains Republicans make in the Trump Democrat seats. Henry, are there any early indications on where we could see those seats go?

The earliest indication would be Virginia's 7th and Virginia's 2nd districts. Those are very competitive races. Virginia's 2nd is in Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Biden won it by a couple of points. Republican incumbent.

is being challenged by a Democrat. If she holds on with a more than two, three or four point margin, that'll be good. And then Virginia's seventh is a multiracial district in the exurbs of Northern Virginia and Fredericksburg. It's a Biden plus seven district, but there's a lot of minority voters there. If Republicans get close, that's a good sign nationwide. If Republicans win, that's a great sign nationwide.

Do you think the Republicans will keep that majority in the House if you are betting on it? If I were betting on it, I would say yes, but that's because I think President Trump is likelier than not to win. And I think that means that they will get enough of the close seats that they will forestall and offset some of the Democratic games. Fantastic. Next question. You had Eugene Robinson on lately on your podcast talking about black turnout.

How do you think that's playing out this election? Republicans always try to go get this big whale and it always seems like we fail. We talk about it a lot, but it doesn't come through. Do you think they're doing what needs to be done? And also take that to Hispanic voters.

Yeah, so, well, they're definitely doing more than I've ever seen a Republican presidential candidate do. The other day, it's the last week of the campaign, Donald Trump's in pivotal North Carolina. So where does he go? A town called Rocky Mount, 63% African-American. Now, the polling averages suggest that Trump will get

somewhere around 15% of the African-American vote, which means that Harris will get somewhere around 80%. Now that sounds, wow, Republicans lose the vote by 65 points or so. They usually lose it by more than 80%.

You shave 15 points of that off of that margin in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania. And that means that Joe Biden's margins are virtually gone in both of those states and that Wisconsin flips. So I think Republicans are doing what they need to do. And we'll just see whether the polls are right or whether or not the Democrats' efforts to reinvigorate the historic Democratic heritage of the African-American vote over the last two weeks have succeeded.

Henry, do you think it's a little hard to tell how much enthusiasm there is to vote in this election in the black community? Did you or Eugene, are you getting any indications on that front? Because I'll be honest, Republicans who are like there's a bunch of black voters who are going to storm out to the polls and vote for Donald Trump. I'm not buying it, but I might well buy that there are a lot of folks who might normally go out and vote for the Democrat who aren't going to do that.

Yeah. You know, it's always hard when you're looking at a poll to tell which comes first, the chicken or the egg. What we're seeing in early voting is that early voting in African-American areas is low.

It is lower than it was in 2020. Of course, it's lower than it was in 2020. In most places, it was particularly low. Does that mean they're unenthusiastic, or does that mean they're all waiting until Election Day? We won't know until Election Day. But it is very clear, whether you look at Inkster in Michigan, whether you look at Philadelphia or Milwaukee, whether you look at black areas in Virginia, whether you look at African-American areas in Georgia that

While many are turning out, it is distinctly a lower rate than in prior years. And if that carries through to election day, that's very bad for Kamala Harris. What on election night should our audience be looking for to tell you if Donald Trump wins?

Kamala Harris have the momentum to carry through on these battleground states? What are some indicators they should be looking for? The first indicator that's meaningful is Georgia's early vote. People are streaming out of the doors to vote early. There will probably be close to 4 million early votes cast. The turnout will be a little over 5 to 5.5 million, 70 to 80 percent.

of the total vote will be cast early. Georgia law now says, unlike in 2020, that those votes must be released by 8 p.m. Eastern.

So at 8 p.m. Eastern, you'll know whether or not it's a race in Georgia, whether Donald Trump has it won. If Democrats are not leading in the early vote and there's no indication that the African-American vote has warmed out on election night, then Trump could very well be declared the winner as of 8 p.m. And once he wins Georgia, that's...

That's like controlling the center of the chessboard. He has three independent ways to get to 270 once he gets Georgia. So that's the first thing you need to look for. What's the next one?

Next one is North Carolina. North Carolina closes at 730. It does not have a law mandating a time for early vote release, but they usually do it quickly. They also will have a very large percentage of their total vote. Historically, Democrats have won the early vote. They had like 160,000 more registered Democrats and Republicans vote in the early vote in 2022. They

won the early vote and then the Republicans made it up on election day. Right now, Republicans are outvoting Democrats in the early vote. By 9 o'clock, and all these times are Eastern time because that's where I am, by 9 o'clock Eastern time, you'll have a good sense whether or not North Carolina is in play. And again, they've

You're talking about North Carolina, where Democrats typically need to win the early vote. If they're not winning the early vote, you could have North Carolina called by then. And then it's Katie bar the door. Then all Donald Trump really needs is to win Arizona and Wisconsin or one of the other two Midwestern states. Henry, you had New York 17 and 19 as house race key house races to watch.

New York is one of those states, as I understand, at least still last cycle. And correct me if they've changed it and I'm wrong, but they still do basically all day of. So they'll have results probably in that 9 p.m. Eastern window also in those two seats, correct? Well, they have extensive early voting now in New York. A lot of in-person early voting and they do not have mail voting, but they do.

While they're releasing the in-person numbers, they're not releasing the mail numbers. So we'll have a good sense again early, but I don't think New York releases the early vote quite as quickly as some of the southern states. New York closes a little bit later than other states, so I would expect that maybe we'll be talking about

10 o'clock Eastern time. Yeah, New York closes at 9 o'clock Eastern time. It's the latest closing Eastern time zone state. So you won't get early vote until around 10 Eastern time in significant numbers. And then precinct votes will start to come in. It was pretty quick in the primary.

But you never know. I would say between 10 and 11 o'clock Eastern is when you'll have a sense of those seats and a few others in New York that are up for grabs. Fantastic. Henry Olson, thank you so much. We're going to be coming back with more from Henry here in just a moment. He's sticking around for our next segment, so stay tuned.

Thank you. I am Seth Leipson here with Sam Stone, Chuck Warren and our good friend Henry Olson as well on our special crossover pre-election edition of both Breaking Battlegrounds and the Seth Leipson Show. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to the Seth Leibson show. Delighted to have Sam Stone and Chuck Warren with me from Breaking Battlegrounds heard here every Saturday. We're doing a special pre-election show this hour as we were the hour prior. Gentlemen, take it away. Our next guest up as we're talking with people in all the key swing states and the areas folks need to be watching leading into this election is Donald Bryson, chief executive officer of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.

Donald, welcome to the program. I'm just going to jump right in there with a question. What are you seeing in terms of early returns from the areas in North Carolina that were hardest hit by the hurricane? Well, you know, fortunately what we're seeing, and by the way, thanks for having me on. I think this project's really exciting and I'm honored to be on with you all. But I think what we're seeing mostly is that the

The election sites in Western North Carolina have been able to get up and be operational. Of the 13 hardest hit counties in Western North Carolina, they actually have a higher voter rate than the rest of the state as a total. It's just a little bit higher. But, you know, the fact that people are up and going at all and the fact that they had 95% of voting sites back up and operational within a week,

of the storm in those counties was, was really remarkable. Well, that's impressive by those government officials who put that together. Yeah. That's not a story that we've actually heard anywhere else. No, it's not. And, uh, if people want to see that, that story is actually up, uh, at Carolina journal, uh, it's a newspaper, a part of the John Locke foundation, uh, where I'm the CEO. If people want to go to Carolina journal.com, we have, uh, that story up and yeah, West North Carolina has actually bounced right back, uh,

and is ready and up. And, you know, it looks like they're voting at a higher rate, about two tenths of a percent higher than the rest of the state generally. That's fantastic. Donald, what are key indicators for us out West should be looking for how North Carolina is going to turn out on election night? Well, that's a really good question. I think, you know,

You know, the key indicators are generally, you know, what does voter registration look like? And, you know, Western North Carolina is generally kind of a red area. Congressman Chuck Edwards is the congressman who represents that district right now. That's likely a safe Republican seat.

But the question is, and of course there were a lot of conspiracy theories flying around at the time of the storm, of, you know, with FEMA dragging its feet so that Republican voters couldn't get out and vote. And that was all sort of hogwash that nobody could really prove or disprove or anything like that. But I think that the fact that, you know, voters in a reliably red area are turning out to vote at a high rate is probably a good sign for Republicans in a statewide race in North Carolina.

Donald, some of your polling shows obviously this race, as we're seeing nationally, very, very close. Your most recent poll, I believe, had Donald Trump at 47.2 percent, Kamala Harris at 46.6 percent.

You've got a handful of third party candidates, Libertarian Chase Oliver, Cornel West, the Justice for All Party and the Green Party, Jill Stein and Randall Terry running for the Constitution Party. Is there any effort by either campaign at this point, given how close it is to go in and try to peel off any of those voters?

So I haven't seen any efforts. Of course, you know, Harris and Trump have spent a lot of time here. They actually had campaign events this week at the same time within an hour of each other here in North Carolina. They are literally, as you say this, they are literally here doing dueling events in Arizona right now today. So we're.

Yeah, it's funny how that happens. There was a really great picture from 2016 when Trump was running against Hillary Clinton. And I believe it was Trump's plane was landing at the same time that Clinton's plane was taking off. And somebody got that picture at the Raleigh-Durham Airport. And that's sort of indicative of where we are in North Carolina. Yeah.

You know, I've not seen a lot of efforts from either of those campaigns to reach out to those third, fourth and fifth party voters. What I have seen is a concerted effort from the Democrat state Democratic Party to keep those third parties off of the ballot altogether. There have been a series of lawsuits to keep RFK, as an example, off the ballot. And there's a lawsuit to keep him on the ballot. There was another lawsuit to keep Cornel West off of the ballot. They have fought the Green Party several times.

over the years to keep them off statewide ballots. And so that's a disappointing part of this electoral process that I've seen out of the Democratic Party. But in terms of, you know, appealing to those Green Party voters or those Libertarian voters, I've not really heard that from the Harris or Trump campaigns. How much is Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson's gubernatorial campaign affecting Donald Trump in North Carolina?

I think that's the $64,000 question, right? How much is, you know, with the controversies that came out on CNN surrounding Lieutenant Governor Robinson,

how much is that dragging down? Not only Donald Trump, but how is it affecting all the down ballot races? You know, North Carolina is one of those few states that actually has a governor's race at the same time as the presidential race. And, but all the 170 seats of our state legislature are up, including and including our council state, like attorney general and state treasurer and that sort of thing. So what are the coattail effects of,

Mark Robinson. It's unclear right now. Our latest poll from Carolina Journal were sort of showing that everything's a toss-up in North Carolina. Everything's incredibly close. But

But the early returns in terms of nobody's actually counted most of how people have voted, but Republicans are actually turning out in early voting at unprecedented levels in ways that I've never seen in all my years following politics in North Carolina. I don't think anybody else has seen that.

And we're also seeing that Democrats are not turning out at levels that they usually do in presidential election years. And so that really could mean that there's not that much of an effect overall on the ticket from Robinson to everyone else. Well, yeah.

For the early turnout, the Republicans seem to be doing well in there and they're doing well in Nevada and Arizona as well. Are these low propensity voters, though, or are these are sure, true red, white, blue voters? Arizona is a lot of low propensity. Yeah, Arizona is low propensity. Is it low propensity turning out in North Carolina? Do you know that?

Yeah, it is largely low propensity voters and new voters that are turning out. You know, that was the question on a lot of people's minds were, OK, Republicans are turning out. Are they just trading election day votes for early votes? If that's the case, then this is a wash. Right. Right. But it appears that.

As of today, we're recording this on Halloween, but as of today, only about 9 or 10 percent of those Republican voters were Election Day voters in 2020, which means that these are all generally low propensity voters. In North Carolina, what we usually see is kind of this red surge that Democrats and liberals turn out to vote in early voting.

The immediate returns come out at 7.30 Eastern when the polls close, and that's what we see. And then Republicans sort of surge over time as the Election Day votes come in. But if the numbers that I just discussed are true, then we will not see that red surge phenomenon that we typically do in North Carolina elections. Quick last question here. If you had to lay down a bet,

How much – how do Republicans do on your statehouse, all of those seats there that people aren't talking about? Are you going to see a shift or not? Are we going to see a shift in terms of the state legislature and all that? Yeah, control of the state legislature, balance, all that sort of thing. Right.

Yeah, nobody's really questioning whether or not we will see Democrats take the majority in the state legislature, which Republicans currently have a supermajority. The question is, especially with the Mark Robinson controversy, people are generally accepting that – Does it peel that off?

Is the current attorney general, the Democrats, going to win? So the question is, do Republicans have super majorities to combat the Democratic governor with? And so that's sort of the question. But if Republicans are turning out this high of a level, then perhaps they will, in fact, retain those super majorities. Thank you very much. We will be right back.

Welcome back to the Seth Leibson Show today with Sam Stone and Chuck Warren from Breaking Battlegrounds and their special guests on our pre-election Halloween special. Sammy. Our next guest up today, Charles McElwee. He is the founding editor of Real Clear Pennsylvania, contributing writer for Real Clear Politics, City Journal and Politico. You can follow him on X at C.F. McElwee.

Thank you so much for joining us once again, Charles. We want to jump right in. We had Henry Olson on earlier. He listed Pennsylvania 8 as one of the key early indicators in the election night outcome. What do you make of that race?

The Pennsylvania 8, you said? Yes. Yes. Yes, certainly one of the indicators of a lot of these races across the state. I mean, it's a culturally fractious state. So it's not just northeastern Pennsylvania. It's south-central Pennsylvania. But certainly when you look at the 8th and the fact that it includes a very populous area of the state, the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre-Hazleton corridor, plus the Poconos,

It's definitely a place to follow on election night because historically this has been a Democratic bastion, and it is trending red. Luzerne County, for example, is now a Republican county in terms of voter registration margins, but the district itself is split in half for that county, and it still has Scranton, which is historically a...

blue area. But even there, there are disaffected Democrats and social Democrats who are trending Republican. But I would agree that it is a very important district to follow. This is Chuck. So regarding in the past, Democrats have been able to run up the score significantly in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Do you think they'll be able to run up those same type of numbers this cycle? Or has Trump's

with working class men going to take some of the bite out of that for Democrats? It will take some of the bite out for Democrats, but their new path to statewide victory is really suburbia. So back in 2016, uh, Democrats view the path to victory as suburban Philadelphia, especially, uh,

Three counties outside the city, Bucks, Montgomery and Delaware. They did not include Chester at that time because it was viewed as very Republican, even though it's outside the city. And Pat Toomey in 2016 as senator then did win reelection.

Since then, eight years later, their path includes Chester County. And really, that's the ultimate example in terms of their, let's say, blue wall in the state. The fact that Pennsylvania since 2016 has gotten so much more suburban and the growth has occurred there so much more compared to even eight years ago.

and it's trending blue in places that were still Republican in 2016, including in Chester. Bucks is interesting because that has a working class population, especially in the lower Bucks County, and that has played a pivotal role in that county in recent months, flipping red narrowly. In 2016, Trump barely lost Bucks County, and certainly that's a

in terms of measuring the disaffection of those working class white men, for example, but really the broader working class electorate across the state that includes Latinos and black voters, not just in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but in places like Harrisburg City or Allentown as well. Charles, one of the things that's been out there on the Internet lately, people have been talking about is a big surge in voting numbers.

from the Pennsylvania Amish community. Is that actually happening? Because historically, they have generally shied away from voting at all. So, right, the Amish population is fascinating to follow because it's a demographic group that has experienced significant growth in the past 25 years, especially in Lancaster County, the heart of

of Amish country in Pennsylvania, that's in South Central Pennsylvania. And while certainly not a segment of the population that could be the ultimate deal breaker, it could play a role in a state where Trump barely won in '16 and where Biden barely won in '20.

But even in Lancaster County, which is historically home to the Amish population, this is also a county that has experienced significant growth even since 16th, the economic powerhouse. The city of Lancaster itself is a hub.

for remote workers, people relocating there for a better quality of life from Metro D.C., which isn't that far, or Philadelphia, which is just a train ride away, but also areas around that county which are treading blue. So it's, again, this...

Suburban. Perfect. Real quick. We have just 10 seconds left. If you had a gut call, Harris or Trump in the end. I'm not making a gut call. I can foresee both scenarios. But I think at the very end of this, Republicans are expressing a level of enthusiasm that I think doesn't match the reality of the suburban voting bloc. We'll take it and we'll be right back.

Well, welcome back to the special Seth Leibson show Halloween Eve, our election special with Sam Stone and Chuck Warren from Breaking Battlegrounds. Gentlemen, take it away. Our final guest up today, Seth, is Ben Yount from Wisconsin. He is the news director and show host at News Talk 1130 WISN, spent 15 years covering corruption and the Daily Insights at the Illinois Capitol, where there's plenty of corruption to cover.

and now writes and talks about Wisconsin each day. Ben Yount, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the program. I think we've got to start with the obvious question because we need to know.

Are you related to Robin Young? If I was, I would be far better at hitting the curveball. I wouldn't be waking up at the crack of dawn to do radio. I'll tell you that. But, hey, it's great when your last name is the same as the big baseball star. My name's on everybody's jersey. Everybody's my brother up here. It's a little different than Leapson. It doesn't matter where you go in Milwaukee. They're rooting for you, man. They love me. They love me.

So jumping into the actual topic here, some of the polling in Wisconsin, what are you seeing particularly? Obviously, there's been a lot of national news around Trump-Harris, but what are you seeing in the race between Eric Hovde and Tammy Baldwin? How's that looking right now?

Yeah, we just had the latest Marquette Law School poll, and that's the gold standard poll here in Wisconsin. It's the third most reputable poll in the nation, so this one people actually trust. And the Senate race is surprisingly close. It's a two-point Tammy Baldwin lead, 51-49. It's surprising because when Marquette came out with its last poll,

at the beginning of this month that had tenny baldwin up by seven she's an incumbent senator she get them off a lot of support out of madison which is the giant democratic hub and i'm sure we'll talk about that some more but tenny baldwin is one of these senators we don't really see her very much didn't really do anything and so every time she's up for election it's tough to on elector because she hasn't done anything that

really makes a lot of voters angry. Our listeners in Arizona might be familiar with the Mark Kelly version of that program. Yeah. Well, and look, this is a testament to the power of the incumbency and a testament to the power of the Democrats' national money machine. An awful lot of her money comes from out of state. She's getting money from Wall Street. She's getting money from Big Pharma.

look they brought the cast of the west wing into wisconsin to raise money for the democrats and and as i said at the time when you're turning out to see president jed bartlett you're not turning out for vice president kamala harris you're certainly not turn about percent of the time you ball with the margin of error on the market poll is four points so a two-point race is well within the margin

Hovde has a fighter's chance at this. Really, the thing that Hovde has to hope for is that Donald Trump performs well

as he has in the past three elections here in Wisconsin, where he has outperformed every poll. He's down one in the latest Marquette poll. But at this point last year, he was down double digits to Joe Biden. Biden won the state by about 22,000 votes. That's less than 1%. At this point in 2016, Hillary Clinton was up six and she lost. So the polls have always undercounted Trump support. If

If Trump wins Wisconsin by three, I think you see Eric Hovde win the Senate race as well. That swing you're talking about within a month going from seven to two, that is outside the margin. That's a huge swing. Is that normal at all in Wisconsin? Because I think we're seeing a real shift against some of these Senate candidates across the country.

You're seeing the race tighten because people are paying attention. You're also seeing what happens when you've had years and years of

months and months of hard campaigning. Tammy Baldwin doesn't have an answer for the questions that almost every single Democrat is facing or should be facing across the country. She supports the radical trans agenda. And Huvdy is on the radio today, almost every station, almost every commercial, saying Tammy Baldwin wants to put

boys in your daughter's high school sports. And look, Wisconsin is not Texas. We're not California. We don't turn out tons of D1 athletes. But you get to some of the smaller towns in this state and Friday night lights, Tuesday night hoops, very,

Those are real community bonds. And outside of the University of Wisconsin bubble in Madison, not a lot of people like the idea of their daughters missing out to men who want to go and hang out with the girls. And, in fact, even in Madison, there's a story that never really died of an 18-year-old high school senior who went in and showered.

He was completely naked with three 14-year-old girls who had just gotten out of swim class, and nothing really happened. So that's the issue that Tammy Baldwin can't ignore, hasn't addressed. And if you want to know why you're starting to see an awful lot, it's obviously the economy. It's obviously crime and immigration. But the trans issue, you get outstate Wisconsin, and that is a huge issue.

We have about a minute left here, Ben. What do you feel – how do you feel the Trump campaign or Republicans, the energy and organization compares now to 2016 and 2020?

I think this is a far better run campaign than either of his previous. First one, he kind of was surprised to win in the 2020 election. They sort of scattershot it. You know, there was some half-assing in Wisconsin. Here now, he has stayed on message. He has been unflappable, and he has...

expertly trolled the Democrats. Look, he was in Green Day yesterday in a garbage truck. And that's the kind of thing that every single person that I talk to on Twitter, on a radio station, just here in my suburban neighborhood, they laughed and said, well, I guess I'm a garbage man now, too. I think that Trump has won or has run a very good campaign. And one last thing, real quick. The

The latest Marquette Law School poll came out and it said, are you living comfortably? When Trump was president, that number was 60 percent across Wisconsin. After four years of Biden, that number is 45 percent. If you ask me what's the one thing that makes me think Donald Trump is going to win Wisconsin, it's that 15 point swing. Lots of people in this state are not living as well as they did just four years ago. And that's the issue that Kamala Harris has never been able to deal with.

And that's the issue that's going to carry. Ben Yount, thank you so much. We really appreciate having you on the program. How do folks follow you on election night to catch that? You can find me. I'm on Twitter at Yount1130. It's exactly the way it is. And find WISN. We're on the iHeart app. You guys are there, too. So just slide down the dial on that app a little bit. You can find us. Perfect. Thank you so much.

Yes, thank you indeed. And thank you, Chuck and Sam. We'll come back with a final closing thought as we get our clothes on for Halloween. It would be nice to see you guys put some clothes on. We'll be right back.

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Well, Chuck and Sam, this was special, and we should think about doing these kinds of specials whenever there's big news. I love doing these ahead of an election and being able to bring in all the viewpoints from around the country. I want to thank all our guests today. You had Constantine Carrard here in Arizona, Chris Saliza, and Henry Olson on the national beat.

Donald Bryson in North Carolina, Charles McElwee in Pennsylvania, and Ben Yount, unfortunately no relation to Robin in Wisconsin, but he knows his stuff there. Thank you to all of them. They were great. I was really surprised by the vote turnout in western North Carolina after the hurricane. That was really surprising. That was my shocking news for the day. You know the funny thing about FEMA, Seth, and you'll get this. Mm-hmm.

Our side underestimates the utter incompetence of government. They see a conspiracy when what oftentimes is going on is just that our government is bad at doing things. Well, it's bad. You and I talked about this, too. And Seth, I don't know if you agree with this, but I think it's just so big, it's unmanageable. And they need to start breaking it up and say.

FEMA, this is your two responsibilities. You have no other responsibilities. There's no DEI. There's nothing like that. Your job is to clean up after disasters. That's it. That's your job. Nothing more, nothing less. We've got just a minute left here. I'm going to start. My prediction, Trump wins this thing. I think Republicans end up with 52, maybe 53 Senate seats. I think we hold our margin in the House.

I think we have 52 to 54 Senate seats. I think if we lose the House, it's because they've been completely incompetent the past two years. And I don't know about Trump-Harris. Yeah, I'm kind of somewhere right in between you. I think it's going to look a lot like 1980, where we actually knock off some important senators. If you were listening, I think it was to the Tammy Baldwin ways. Could very well happen. Could happen in Montana.

Could happen in some interesting places. We knocked out McGovern. We knocked out Birch Bayh. We knocked out some famous ones then. I think we could do it again now and be a great beginning of taking our country back.

I agree. And I still agree. Sam has a theory. He's had it for months that this could actually turn out to be a very big victory for Donald Trump. I don't think there's a possibility for a big victory for Kamala. I started out like victory possible, but not big. Yes. I started out thinking it could be well outside the margins in either direction. And I agree with you now. I think Harris could pull out. It's one way. It's one way on this. If you wanted to be on one team.

You'd want to be on the Trump team. That's always a question people forget to ask. But I think it's indicative. If you had to make your whole livelihood on picking one team right now, which team would you pick? I think most people would say I'd rather be on the Trump team than Harris. I agree. It's a matter of victory. Well, gentlemen, thank you. We shall figure out another national crisis or event to do this again. On behalf of Sam and Chuck, I am Seth Leibson. Until tomorrow. God bless you all. Class is dismissed.

Four years. That's how long it took Democrats to ruin our economy and plunge our southern border into anarchy. Who helped them hurt us? Ruben Gallego. Washington could have cut taxes for Arizona families, but Ruben blocked the bill. And his fellow Democrats gave a bigger break to the millionaire class in California and New York. They played favorites and cost us billions. And Ruben wasn't done yet.

We'll be right back.

Carrie and the Republicans will secure the border, support our families, and never turn their backs on us. Carrie Lake for Senate. I'm Carrie Lake, candidate for U.S. Senate, and I approve this message. Paid for by Carrie Lake for Senate and the NRSC.